Simple Bear Warrior Barbarian

[Trask]

So in my recent campaign I'm playing I died :smallannoyed: due to some very very unlucky rolls. The character was a barbarian and I was building him as an Eye of Gruumsh, but now I don't really want to make another one, I feel a bit of a bad taste in my mouth of it. So basically this post is asking any experienced barbarians for a simple Bear Warrior build. My DM kind of frowns on over optimized builds and I dont really care one way or another, and Bear Warrior sounds very fun. So does anyone have any fun and simple Barbarian Bear warrior builds? Thanks

[Troacctid]

Simple? Well, I guess if you want simple, you would go straight Barbarian 7 into Bear Warrior. Probably with the Bear Totem (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#barbarianVariantTotemB arbarian), for elegance, although Toughness is a pretty horrendous feat, so you might want to go Dragonborn and trade it away for Dragon Wings or Dragon Tail. (Wolf + Spirit Lion would be more powerful than Bear, but also less simple.) Orc or Water Orc for the base race, just to get a nice high Strength score. (Water Orc is obviously better, of course, since it's just a free swim speed and +2 Con, but maybe you don't want to introduce the extra aquatic vector into your fluff.)

[Cerefel]

Something to consider is entering Warshaper at some point after your first bear warrior level, but it is by no means a necessity.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yeah, I got to recommend the following.

Barbarian 5 / Fighter 2 / bear warrior 10 / warshaper 3

A lot of people are going to tell you to go Orc. They are not wrong. If LA buyoff is in play, a goliath is also a really good option due to the mountan rage ACF.

You want to get a good two handed weapon enchanted as a mouth pick weapon.

I like to throw the two fighter levels in for feats really. Trapsense+2 and DR1/- isn't worth much. Two fighter feats free up more feats for rage feats. Extra rage is a must. Other rage feats are really good.

Here is another interesting build that is an elf build.

Wild elf
Ranger 4/ barbarian 1 / Wildrunner 2 / bear warrior 1 / wild runner 8 / bear warrior 4. You never get dire bear form, but you get some really interesting fear effects and such tacked on to your rage/bear form.

Here is the thing. Wildrunner expressly is a frenzy (and you get 3+cha uses per day, much more than rage) and expressly stacks with rage. This lets you turn into a bear (expressly works with frenzies) and rage/frenzy for stacking str bonuses. Intimidating rage allows you to demoralize 2 targets and wildrunner cowers everything within 30ft, and these fear effects stack.

The wildrunner frenzy grants +2 str and +6 dex. This means by using your rage to turn into a (black) bear your stat mods are +10 str +6 dex. If you use the frenzy to turn into a bear, your mods are +12 str.

The problem is that the wildrunner build is more MAD (Cha is now important) and you must be an elf. On the other hand, you get a lot more interesting effects tied into your rage/frenzy and you get LOTS of uses of your rage/frenzy and you get HiPS and decent hide checks. Why be a bear when you can be a STEALTH BEAR!

[MisterKaws]

I second Goliath, especially if you dip Fighter to get the lesser Dungeoncrasher ACF, put in Knockback and it gets pretty good.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Bear Warrior 10 is a trap. Bear Warrior 5 nets you +16 STR, Bear Warrior 10 only nets you +20. That's a +4 for 5 levels. Yea, no. Bad idea.

Barbarian/Warblade/Bear Warrior 5/Warshaper4.

Tossing monk in might work, depending on if your GM lets you consider your natural attacks to also be considered unarmed attacks. Two levels of Totemist for Gorillian Arms bound to Totem might not be a bad idea either. PsiWar would be tricky to fit in, but is your basic 'king of smack' type build that would go well here.

[KillianHawkeye]

One of my current characters who is a ton of fun to play is a Dwarf Ftr 2/Barb 5/Bear Warrior. Just got to the 3rd level of BW, and I'm planning on switching out to something else after 5 (possibly Fist of the Forest or maybe Frostrager, I haven't decided yet). Put a few cross-class ranks into Tumble, because Dwarves are the only race who can Tumble in medium or heavy armor (mithral full-plate FTW)! Be an annoyingly hard to hit warrior half the time and an all-offense, no mercy bear of destruction the other half. :smallbiggrin:

[KingSmitty]

a simple bear warrior?

Human Bear Totem Barbarian5/fighter1/Warblade1/Bear warrior 5

after level 12 it's whatever, if you're playing in a bearly optimized group this will suffice and get you great results.

Warshaper has some nice benefits, I love to add Berserk from Deities & Demigods to any barbarian build and stack all my rage-like abilities.

Kensai can be real good if you enchant your bear body.

[Fizban]

I seem to remember the Berserk specifically preventing you from stacking certain types of rages.

If your DM doesn't like high-OP builds then don't even bother looking up Spirit Lion. The SRD totems (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#barbarianVariantTotemB arbarian) are usually allowed, though some are better than others. Bear Totem trades away two of the barbarian's best features (fast movement and uncanny dodge) in exchange for getting Improved Grapple for free, and then gains an extra +4 grapple in rage. That+bear warrior for the improved grab in bear form makes you very good at grabbing people smaller than you and not letting go, and against bigger creatures you can still grab normally with Improved Grapple. Now without other stuff you won't do much damage while grappling, but having the two options of maul or pin is a nice bit of versatility.

If you don't want grapple or just want simpler, basic barb is fine. Bear speed+fast movement makes you pretty dang fast, and remember that even basic uncanny dodge makes you immune to ranged/invisible sneak attacks forever (and any rogue who stays in melee with a bear is asking for it).

Barb5/Fighter 2/Bear Warrior X is generally the best entry. Take Extra Rage early Extend if you want, use the fighter feats on whatever seems useful, grab Improved Natural Attack (claw) once you can bear (people who change shape can always qualify for feats in those forms): INA (claw) will boost your grizzly claws quite a bit. Bear Warrior 10 may not be great, but consider that other rage classes will still only add so much more strength. The main problem is that you spend 5 levels not getting anything, not that the Dire Bear stats are bad. You could also do more fighter for bonus feats: people laugh at Weapon Specialization, but WF+WS+Melee Weapon Mastery is worth as much or more than Rage and you could grab that quickly after BW5 instead of waiting for Dire.

Kensai requires Lawful, being Lawful makes you lose Rage. Otherwise it would be a hilarous combo: concentrate really hard, get an extra +8 strength, then rage into a bear. Duration would be terrible since it's based on Kensai level, which would be low.

[Aleolus]

If LA and RHD aren't an issue, I think it might be fun to do a werebear Bear totem Barbarian/Bear Warrior

[Trask]

This sounds fun, I like the idea of grappling although it might annoy my DM as he hates doing grappling lol. Maybe going into something like frenzied berserker afterwards would be good if going all the way to 10 with a bear warrior isnt that great. Can natural weapons cleave?

[Aleolus]

Yes. The feat simply says "weapon", it doesn't specify manufactured or otherwise. In fact, I just noticed a technicallity I'm going to start a thread on to discuss

[Cerefel]

Something else fun to add to the build could be frenzied berserker. You'd be able to take the first level right before bear warrior. It does take some optimization to consistently make your will save and the consequences for failing are pretty huge. All in all it's a powerful class that can be fun if built right.

[Fouredged Sword]

Also you can use your frenzies to turn into a bear if you wish. They are a separate pool from your rages.

[daremetoidareyo]

And then there's the berzerk from dieties and demigods that you can take 3 levels of to first turn into a polar bear, then a bear warrior bear from there...

Unlike bear warrior, you get the base stats of a brown bear (Str = 27), Upon which you get to add bear warrior's +16 to strength.

Which would mean that you're a dude who worships bears, learns to literally become bear, whom he invests with additional bear power!

[Fizban]

Frenzied Berserker is not a good idea. Playing one requires a party and build with special plans set in place at all times to prevent you from suddenly killing all your allies. A Frenzied Berserker is forced to frenzy every single time they take damage, preventable only with a will save based on the damage taken. Any attack, spell, fall, or light breeze will cause you to attack your allies. This forces them to waste resources controlling you, and leave you with fewer frenzies for later, and if an intelligent foe that can do hit and run figures this out you're screwed.

A Berserk is only slightly better. You aren't forced to Battle Fury whenever you take damage, but the will save to avoid attacking people does not end the fury, instead only stopping you for a round (potentially even having to roll for every target-increasing your chances of a bad roll). A Frenzied Berserker can try to boost their will saves in order to break out on their own, but a Berserk's allies will need to be able to last the entire duration of the Fury.

[daremetoidareyo]

Frenzied Berserker is not a good idea. Playing one requires a party and build with special plans set in place at all times to prevent you from suddenly killing all your allies. A Frenzied Berserker is forced to frenzy every single time they take damage, preventable only with a will save based on the damage taken. Any attack, spell, fall, or light breeze will cause you to attack your allies. This forces them to waste resources controlling you, and leave you with fewer frenzies for later, and if an intelligent foe that can do hit and run figures this out you're screwed.

A Berserk is only slightly better. You aren't forced to Battle Fury whenever you take damage, but the will save to avoid attacking people does not end the fury, instead only stopping you for a round (potentially even having to roll for every target-increasing your chances of a bad roll). A Frenzied Berserker can try to boost their will saves in order to break out on their own, but a Berserk's allies will need to be able to last the entire duration of the Fury.

You play a berzerk and just never battle fury. You're in the class for one thing: beast shape. You aren't even allowed to battle fury while you're in brown bear form. You use that as a platform for bear warrior to transform you further into the bear zone.

[Fizban]

I fully admit that I know no rule preventing you from stacking those two abilities, but any DM that allows you to change from one form into the same form and become stronger is asking for it. The language mentions "his strength", which can easily be interpreted as the strength of his natural form and cause the bear rage to override the beast shape with the normal stats of a bear rage. It's also unplayable since there's no duration listed.

If you want to turn into a bear in a non-bear-warrior way, there are other classes with less problems. Primeval will turn you into a bear (with DM's permission, I think brown bear is quite suitable) with stats based on your own, which also increase with level, and increases your own natural stats which will in turn increase those of your primeval form. It's a bit of a pain to qualify for and gives you few uses, but Wildshape Ranger fixes that perfectly by giving you wild shape uses to power primeval form, and knocks one of the prerequisites off. You can mix in 1-2 levels of Bear Totem to knock off another prerequisite, and the usual Improved Grapple to use with your bear form's improved grab. You can stack rage on primeval form of course, and even one use of rage or wild shape qualifies you for the extra rage/extra wild shape feats, so you can line it all up however you want.

I'd say that last is by far the strongest bear, the only problem is taking a standard action to bear up instead of a free one, but it compensates with a longer duration. For comparison: a Bear Warrior gets Brown Bear at ECL 12, while a Primeval would get Brown Bear at ECL 9, and at ECL12 he has an extra +3 str/dex/con and +2na over the Bear Warrior, and he can stack rage for another +4 when the Bear Warrior cannot. Primeval beats the Dire Bear Warrior as well, and does it in a nice smooth progression.

Edit: actually went and put together the build, and yeah it's pretty strong. So strong it's actually close to matching a real (Dire) bear of the same CR and the build level, ha. But that's before magic items.

[daremetoidareyo]

Ranger into sentinel of Bharrai is another "turn into a bear" option. And you get call lightning for no apparent reason! You just need two terrible exalted feats. This would also theoretically stack with bear warrior's bear strength bonus.